(Drivebycuriosity) - Regarding cities I am polyamorous. I love London, New York City & Los Angeles. I live now in New York and I revisited the other 2 metropolises this summer.
London was my first love as a city. I visited the British metropolis the first time decades ago, since then I am fascinated by the British capital and by megacities in general. I love the diversity, the entertainment and excitement I find there. London, which was founded more than 2000 years ago, has a perfect mix of history & ultra modern architecture. You can spot Roman walls, medieval towers, baroque buildings & futuristic towers there and some parts of the metropolis look like forgotten villages where the mad hatter lives.
London`s patina makes her charming. Even though about 9 million people reside there life seems to be relaxed because the city is very green with ubiquitous gardens & parks. And London is filled with culture & entertainment, which has grown over centuries. UK`s capital has countless museums - including Tate Modern & Tate Britain, National Art Gallery & the Royal Academy of Arts - art galleries & auction houses. London is a very seasoned lady who has aged very well.
New York City, which is my home now, fascinates me as well, even though the metropolis is expensive, extremely loud and very dirty - especially when compared with the clean and tidy German town Bonn, where I had lived before for more than 2 decades. The US metropolis is very crowded and might be more my dangerous. But there are so many advantages. The biggest plus in my eyes is the huge variety. New York gives her citizens & visitors ubiquitous choices. I believe that the huge selection raises the quality of life. It increases the chance to find exactly what I want and makes my life more entertaining.
New York has more of everything - and often in a short distance. New Yorkers don`t need cars - I don´t have one - and I can find there myriads of groceries, shops for clothes, furniture, kitchen equipment - ore anything else - and the next shop is much much closer, a benefit from the high density. New York City is full with restaurants which cater almost any taste and serve every cuisine of the world in different varieties. Going there is almost like traveling thousands of miles to very far regions.
Big Apple New York`s isn´t just the leading financial center in the world, the place also is a hub for fashion, advertising, media and even an uprising center for Internet technology. The city has an impressive accumulation of gorgeous museums like MoMa, Whitney, Guggenheim, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New Museum and other collections. There are hundreds of art galleries which show a huge spectrum and offer countless occasions to discover artists and to experience the pulse of the art world. In New York City almost any day somewhere is an opening reception for a new and interesting exhibition.
I also enjoy the architecture. Ok, New York City cannot compete anymore with the skyscrapers of Shanghai or Dubai. But the US metropolis has a fascinating mixture of old and new and there a legions of buildings with interesting styles. Woody Allen praised - in the begin on his movie "Manhattan"- the "hustle bustle of the crowds and the traffic" and claimed that "New York meant beautiful women".
Los Angeles, which I explored first in 2016 and revisited recently, shares many fascinating aspects with London & New York City. But the west coast metropolis is special. Growing up in Germany, a green and densely populated country, I was impressed by L.A.`s spacious landscape and how the subtropical desert climate shaped the face of the metropolis. L.A. enchants by her geographic lavishness: Streets & avenues seem to reach the horizon and they are flooded with sun light. The dry climate with mild winters and warm, but not too hot summer is another advantage.
Los Angeles is not as walkable as London or New York. The metropolis is a sprawl spread over a huge area but there are oases with cool skyscrapers. Even though that LA seems to be build for cars there is enough space for pedestrians as well and the streets are framed by generous spaced pedestrian ways. There are clusters with a lot cultural live, like Westwood, West- & North Hollywood, Santa Monica, Beverly Hills and many more which easily can be explored by foot. L.A. is not yet as cultural developed as London or New York, but the metropolis has already a striving art scene and some great art museums, including the Hammer Museum, the (private) The Broad, Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) & the County Museum of Art (LACMA).
All three megacities are harbor cities, what partly explains their importance. I enjoyed walking along London´s Thames River, Manhattan´s East River & Hudson Parks and L.A.´s long beaches.
All 3 belong to the superstar cities. According to the consulting firm McKinsey superstar cities share several common characteristics: "In addition to capturing a greater share of income and pulling away from peers, superstars exhibit relatively higher levels of digitization; greater labor skill and innovation intensity; more connections to global flows of trade, finance, and services; and more intangible assets than do their peers" ( mckinsey).
Stay tuned
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